1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunication service and, more particularly, to billing of subscribers for such service.
2. Description of Related Art
In the existing art, when a user signs up for telephone service, the service provider will usually provide the user with a palette of service plans from which to chose. By way of example, a typical service plan will give the user a certain base number of minutes of service for a monthly fee and may then require the user to pay a fairly substantial per-minute charge for each minute of use beyond the base.
The various service plans offered by the service provider may provide assorted combinations of base-minutes/charges and per-minute charges. For instance, (i) one plan might give a user 500 minutes a month for $40.00, with a $0.30/minute charge for each excess minute, (ii) another plan might give a user 1,000 minutes a month for $50.00, with a $0.25/minute charge for each excess minute, and (iii) another plan might give a user 1,500 minutes a month for $60.00, with a $0.20/minute charge for each excess minute. Further, service providers often require users to enter into a contract for a minimum period, such as one or two years, when signing up for a new service plan.
These sorts of service plans tend to work well for users who can manage their minutes well. That is, a user who can accurately predict the number of minutes that he or she will use per month can sensibly select a service plan that provides that number of minutes per month, for a known monthly charge.
Unfortunately, however, the same cannot be said for users who do not manage their minutes well. If a user cannot accurately predict the number of minutes that he or she will use per month, the user is likely to either under-subscribe or over-subscribe, and to thereby incur additional expense that is out of proportion with the user's actual use. For instance, to avoid going over the base amount of minutes allotted per month, a user might sign up for a plan that provides many more minutes per month than the user is ever likely to use. However, such a plan would likely cost a user more than the user thinks, since the user would be paying for so many unused minutes per month. On the other hand, to avoid paying for unused minutes in this way, the user might instead sign up for a plan that includes fewer minutes than the user is likely to use per month. The end result of this alternative approach, however, would be that the user would pay more per month in substantial per-minute charges for use of excess minutes.